Mr. Peabody's Apples

We have been reading a wonderful book this week called Mr. Peabody's Apples by Madonna. We have don a lot of work with vocabulary and identifying the authors purpose for this story.  We learned that the author was trying to teach us a lesson.  Watch the video below of the story and see if you can figure our the lesson the author wanted us to learn.

Whales and Pizza....

This week a Wonderful Whales tradition continued.  We make our giant whale chalk art and took some individual and class photos.  Check them out!

We are getting shot out of a whale!

Last week we read The Runaway Pizza. We even turned it into a mini play.  Today we performed the story for the other first grade classes.  After we performed the story, we made PIZZA!

How is first grade going so far?

Hello Everyone,
I would like a little feedback from you.   How do you think our year is going so far?  Below is a form that you can answer anonymously. I would appreciate your feedback so that I can make changes if needed.  Please know that if there is ANYTHING that is concerning you, you can always share those feelings with me.  I want our year together to be a GREAT one!
Thank you,
Mrs. Wanke

What a day!

Rekenrek Bracelets

We started our math lesson by talking about all the ways to make 10. We made Rekenrek bracelets to help us determine all the combinations of 10. Thank you Mrs. Smallwood for the beads...next time we would appreciate a different color pattern. (Green and Yellow do not work well in a Chicago Bears fan's classroom!)

Reading Rounds

We continue to work on building our stamina and practicing our Reading Rounds.  So far we have learned how to listen to stories, work on writing, and what to do during word work time.  All these activities make us a better reader and writer.  

CHECK US OUT!  

Listening to Stories

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Making words during Word Work time.

Writing about his hero.

Putting the finishing touches on her story.  

How to Pick a Good Fit Book

Today we learned that picking a book is just like picking our shoes!  First, we have to pick a shoe that fits our purpose for the day.  We wouldn't pick rain boots for the jog-a-thon would we?  We also need to pick shoes that fit our interests.  Mrs. Wanke has running shoes because she is interested in running. 

Picking a Good Fit book is just like picking our shoes.  We pick a book that fits our purpose and our interest. We also learned a Good Fit Book for me, might not be a Good Fit book for our friend. To illustrate this two of us had to switch our shoes.  Lily and Caden had to switch shoes. Caden's shoe was too BIG for Lily. She had a hard time walking around.  Lily's shoe was too SMALL for Caden.  He was reluctant to put it on because it did not fit his interests.   

Tomorrow, we will continue this lesson  by talking about the other two components of how we choose a Good Fit Book.  We will learn the rest of the IPICK acronym.  

I choose a book

Purpose

Interest

C__________

K __________

Pinwheels for Peace

Today was International Day of Peace.  To honor this day our whole school "planted" pinwheels to remind us to strive for "whirled" peace. Thank you Mrs. Gocken for organizing this Pecatonica tradition!

"Planting" the pinwheel. 

Table Graffiti

Did we hear you right?  Draw on the table?  

That's right, during our guided math groups this week, we were able to draw on the table.

Mrs. Wanke had us each roll 2 dice.  Those two numbers were the "parts" of our number bond. Then, we added the two parts together and that was the "whole" of our number bond.  Lastly, we had to write all the equations/expressions that matched the number bond. The COOL thing was we wrote all of this ON THE TABLE!

SUPER cool math game!

I stumbled upon a math game today that will help practice number bonds to make 10.  The SUPER SUPER cool thing about the game is it has a whale!  It was like this game was made just for us.  Check it out by clicking on the picture below.